News Around the World
Seafrigo Sogestran – sailed in the TJV by Cédric Château and Jérémie Mion – is the first of the new Pogo 40S4 series-built Class40 designs from Guillaume Verdier. After getting badly held up in the light-air muddle of the first week, from which only overall winner Redman emerged intact, the latest Verdier Class40 showed impressive all-round speed in the tricky conditions to climb from the back of the fleet up to second before eventually ceding the runner-up slot to Banque de Léman in a shifty final 24 hours. An impressive debut nonetheless for a design of which eight have already been sold with the next available delivery slot stretching well into 2023
always been competitors on the water. Because the race was so slow we didn’t have much food, which was also hard on the nerves. ‘We had to start rationing two days before Cape Verde…’ Which
is very early on the voyage! Antoine and Pablo were very tired as they arrived in Martinique after an exhausting final week covering their rivals running and gybing in light to moderate winds. One hour four minutes after Redman crossed the line Banque
du Léman took second place. Valentin Gautier and Simon Koster covered 5,477.45nm on their Manuard Mach40.4 design averaging 10.38kt. The pair returned to the Transat Jacques Vabre aiming to do better than their fourth place in 2019. Two years ago their boat was newly launched and short on testing; this time around Banque du Léman, with its scow-bow (like all new Class40s in the past two years), proved herself against tough opposition. Valentin Gautier admitted their second place almost didn’t
happen: ‘We had a scare last night when a spinnaker halyard broke. Our rivals were right on our neck and we had to react quickly. Some- how we managed to get everything back onboard but pulling the big spinnaker out of the water quickly was hard. However, in just 15 minutes we had a spinnaker in the air again, so it was efficient!’ Simon Koster admits it was a hard race to the finish: ‘It was
tense right to the last minute. We spent all night fighting it out. But this was a great race! The fleet was very close together. We were surprised, we expected to finish the race with five or six boats but we were 30 boats lined up together!’ Just over 30 minutes behind came the new Pogo S4 Sogestran
to claim third place in the Class40s. Co-skippers Cédric Château and Jérémie Mion had sailed 5,399nm at 10.22kt on their brand new Guillaume Verdier design. Just a few months ago Mion was at the Tokyo Olympic Games
in the 470. He teamed up with Château, who’s director of the Normandy Sailing Centre in Le Havre, to go on a rather longer chal- lenge. Château paid tribute after the race: ‘Jérémie is someone who doesn’t give up, he’s a bad loser but a very good winner. We
28 SEAHORSE
are super proud of our first Transat together.’ Like many in the fleet the pair had to overcome technical issues
and the run to the finish line was particularly stressful. ‘We lost ground on our Swiss friends when we tore the big spinnaker. To catch them back up we then had to steer a lot to go fast because we also had power problems onboard,’ explained Château. About 1,000nm from the finish Ian Lipinski’s Crédit Mutuel struck
an object that damaged her keel. The winner of the 2019 race and co-skipper Julien Pulvé were unhurt and continued to Martinique but at reduced speed. That was a particularly bitter blow for the pair as they were in second place when the accident happened. But for this leading group there was never really any chance of
catching Redman, which won the race at the end of the first week with their clever tactics at the Canary Islands. Patrice Carpentier
NEW ZEALAND About mid-2021 when rumours began to circulate that cyclor-power might be readmitted in the Protocol for the 37th America’s Cup, Simon van Velthooven took to his bike for his daily commute to work. ‘It is an hour’s ride each way,’ he says, ‘and I make sure it is the hardest hour I can possibly make it every time. It is now just part of my normal routine. Rain, hail or shine, I do it every day.’ Van Velthooven is a former Olympic bronze medal track cyclist
who was recruited to Emirates Team New Zealand when they were first exploring the cycling idea for the power-hungry AC50 catamarans being developed for the 2017 Cup cycle in Bermuda. Initially his role was as a consultant, but he became hooked on the America’s Cup as a new challenge and ended up onboard the winning campaign, frantically pedalling at the head of a peleton of cyclors pumping oil around the multi-functional hydraulic system. ‘Bermuda was a bit of a whirlwind,’ he recalls. ‘It all happened
very quickly and the cycle arrangement was pretty raw and not really fully developed. I can’t imagine how much further we could have
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